We Could Have Been Great
by VillageVoice
Summary: Callica. Set after episode 5.10. Erica’s left and Callie is a mess. One-Shot.


**Grey's Anatomy  
'We Could Have Been Great'  
**  
**Disclaimer:** Grey's Anatomy and all characters associated with it belong to Shonda Rhimes and ABC. As much as I wish they were mine, they never will be. All other characters and places are mine. If there is a real person or place that I have named in my story, it is purely coincidental. I don't any of the songs playing on Callie's radio either. They are as follows;  
"How Do I Live Without You" – LeAnn Rimes  
"No One Else In Earth" - Wynonna Judd  
"What I Really Meant to Say" – Cyndi Thompson  
"All By Myself" – Celine Dion

**Summary:** Callica. Set after episode 5.10. Erica's left and Callie is a mess.  
**  
Reviews welcome, but please be nice.**

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Callie sat there in the dark room watching the rain fall out the window, the occasional bolt of lightning illuminating the room. It was a typical night in Seattle. A typical night that left the promising orthopedic resident feeling even more alone than she had in a very long time. She flipped on the TV, but that was out. So she just sat there. In the dark. Waiting . . . But for what she didn't know.

She sighed, releasing some of the tension that had been slowly building over the weeks, and decided to try her luck with the radio.

"_How do I live without you I want to know"_

She flipped to a different station.

"_I've been a rock and I've got my fences, I never let them down  
When it comes to love, I keep my senses  
I don't get kicked around"  
_Callie settled back into the couch. This one would work. She was tough, she was sensible. This song would remind her of what as a certain blonde attending had made her forget.  
_"I shivered once you broke into my soul  
The damage is done now I'm out of control  
How did you get to me? "  
_"What the-"  
_"No one else on earth could ever hurt me, break my heart the way you do."_

And then to another station.

"_What I really meant to say  
Is I'm dyin' here inside  
And I miss you more each day  
There's not a night I haven't cried  
And baby, here's the truth  
I'm still in love with you"_

Then another. Apparently only the country stations were coming in.

"_All by myself  
Don't wanna be  
All by myself"_

Callie pursed her lips, turned the radio off and sent the remote flying across the room. "What the fu . . . Are you kidding me?"

"Hey!" Callie whipped her head around and saw a very tired looking Christina Yang standing at her door. "Enough with the throwing and the yelling."

"Sorry. I didn't know you were here. I thought you were still in surgery."

"We weren't even ten minutes in and the guy died."

"Sorry."

Christina just shrugged and turned back into her room. "Whatever. Just keep it down."

Callie waited until Yang shut the door before retreating to the confines of her own room where she could freely let the tears fall. "Why are you doing this to me?" Her life was a mess. She was fine – well she wasn't, but her life was fine in its own messed up little way before Erica Hahn came into her life. Then she just waltzed in and asked her and Mark to go out for a drink one night. And to the surprise of both female doctors, they actually had a really great time. So the next night they went out without Sloan.

And then the next thing she knew she was kissing Erica outside of the hospital and then they were dating and sleeping together . . . and Callie fell for her. Right-on-the-pavement-cause-you-didn't-pick-your-feet-up-enough, fell. She fell for the Cardio god, "Attila the Hahn" ice queen. And she couldn't tell you if it was the way her lips felt upon the older woman's, or the way their hands fit perfectly together, or the way her heart skipped a beat whenever she heard Erica's name over the intercom system in the hospital or heard her yelling at Christina from three floors away. It was all of it.

It was the late night "wine parties" as Christina had named them, waking up with Erica's arms still around her, the way she sounded like a school girl on their first date and her bases talk. It was Erica.

"Laundry." She would do laundry. Laundry would get her mind off of the blonde attending. She wiped her face and began rummaging through the room trying to decipher what was actually dirty and what wasn't. Her hand came upon a shirt. She didn't even realize until she threw it in the basket, but it was Erica's. She sat back down on the bed and took the shirt in her hands. It still smelled like her. Her lavender shampoo and vanilla perfume.

She sighed and shook her head. She missed that lavender shampoo and vanilla perfume so much she found it much too hard to breathe at times. She couldn't stand to be in her room in her own apartment because Erica had helped her move all of her stuff in. Erica was the first one she had made love to on her new bed. First and only one. She brought a hand to the pillow, Erica's pillow. She refused to wash it since the last night Erica stayed over. She just couldn't bring herself to completely erase Erica from her life. She had left Seattle Grace, got a new cell number, and disconnected her home phone – the smells, and now her shirt were the only things Callie had left. And she was not going to give either up.

"I miss you." She spoke, as if holding that shirt was some secret link directly to Erica. As if holding that shirt somehow brought Erica into the room. "I even swore that Sadie was flirting with me earlier today because . . . I was just so lonely and felt so abandoned, so unwanted, that my mind told me she was flirting so I wouldn't feel as worthless as I did when I was going through my divorce."

She paused a moment as a new wave of tears washed over her face. "I really think we had something Erica. I really do, and it could have been great. It could have been better than anything either of us had ever had, but now . . . now we'll never know." She folded the shirt and let it just rest on her lap. "Because you left. We had one fight and you couldn't take it. So like a coward you ran." She took a deep breath, realization setting in. "And I did the same thing when I slept with Mark."

She shook her head and laid the shirt flat against the pillow. "So we both screwed up. I slept with Mark, then I sided with Izzie Stevens and then I completely lost it in the OR. Now I'm flirting with some twenty-something intern because I . . . can't deal with this."

"We still could have been great." She slowly laid herself down and laid her head on Erica's pillow, breathing in the scenes of the pillow and the shirt. She yawned as the full weight of the past few weeks just dropped on her. With what little energy she had left she pulled the covers up over herself and drifted off. "We could have been great."


End file.
